


Extremely Short Bedtime Stories for Tired People

by HelloAmHere



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2019-10-20 12:40:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17622566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelloAmHere/pseuds/HelloAmHere
Summary: This is a place to put short things that I wrote on tumblr but liked anyway, a record, a jumbling thing collecting scenes. Updated as we go.





	1. Bookstore peril

First of all, it’s important to understand that Harry did not  _mean for this to happen._

Of course, Harry doesn’t mean a lot of things to happen. He’s an optimist at heart, but he’s not particularly a planner. He always thinks he’s moving in the  _direction_  of plan, yet events congeal around him differently. Harry was once assessed by an English teacher in school in a way that still stabs directly to the gut: “Harry. Life is not a romantic comedy, and you’re not the hero.”

_Anyway,_ Harry thinks, he didn’t  _mean_ to end up in this situation either, and yet it happened, as things do.

“But it  _is_ a black comedy, so take that Mr. Peterson,” Harry says, from underneath the coffee table edition of  _Cosmos._ He’s pretty sure that’s what it is, because there’s a supernova filling up half his field of vision. Plus it’s got that glossy texture of the fourth edition. “And you know what, your understanding of symbology was always fucked.”

“Oh god, he’s got brain damage,” says the voice of a stranger. Harry twitches, which has the unfortunate side effect of moving the unsteady column of books pinning his liver to the carpet.

“Don’t  _move,”_ the stranger snaps. His voice is raspy and delicious.

“I’m not brain damaged,” Harry says, “I got an A minus and it would’ve been a straight A if we hadn’t had that massive row over  _Jane Eyre.”_

“Ok, crazy,” the stranger says, solicitude soothing over the snappy quality of his sharp tone, an odd mixture, like he’s got too many conflicting thoughts for them to come out cleanly. Harry thinks it’s nice, somehow. Harry can feel the spine of  _An Atlas of America_ pressing into the groove of his sternum, and there’s a wrinkle of allergies already starting in his nose, which is too close to the carpet.   
  
“Just stay there, I’ve called for help. I don’t—I don’t even know what you were thinking.”

Harry sighs, which moves the books more, and the seven novel edition of Jules Verne shifts to a very very dangerous place at the crook of his hip and inner thigh. If only Niall had agreed with Harry’s dislike of needless compendiums.

“You were going to have an entire display of books falling on you,” Harry says. Thinking on it it’s rather impressive how quickly he’d managed to get around the small display table, given that Harry’s usual position in the world is curled up in an armchair with a book. 

“Well and now you’ve got an entire display of hardbacks on you,” the stranger says. “Why are you even selling hardbacks? Don’t you know that everything’s on kindle now?”   
  
He sounds frantic, which puts an edge in a still-delicious voice.   
  
“It is not,” Harry says reflexively, “Physical book sales are up actually plus we provide a vital community third space that doesn’t require a capitalist exchange.”   
  
“Capitalism, what the fuck, is this  _your bookstore?_ You own a business,” the stranger says.   
  
“I own a  _small local business,”_ Harry says. Harry can just see his toes, can just see his hand as the guy crouches down. He’s hovering at the edge of the Unexpected Monument of Harry, an arch of books pinning him neatly between the register counter and the display table.  
  
“Can we focus on you not dying?” the stranger says. Aw. Harry sneezes, and twenty more pounds tilts off the table and onto the mounds of paper and cardboard on his thighs.   


“You know, I was going to get this carpet cleaned and I’ve been putting it off,” Harry says. “That’ll teach me to procrastinate.”

“That’s right, just keep talking, maybe brain blood flow will prevent more damage,” the stranger says. Harry thinks he’s sitting now, at the pile of books that are squashing Harry’s face.

“What’s the over under on digging me out, seeing as I’m the hero who saved your life,” Harry says. A detail left unsaid is that it was definitely Harry’s fault. It was, after all, Harry who was lingering next to the too-high tower of coffee table classics with only one eye on the books he was arranging, because he was too busy assessing the faint frown and intriguing scruffy jawline of the stranger on the other side of it. And it was definitely Harry who had put about thirty more books than recommended into a single book tower, because Harry  _hated_ making the book towers and was engaged in a passive aggressive protest against Zayn, a prong of annoyingly competent and yet judgmental sales&marketing that Niall had forced Harry into hiring.

“I mean. I’m afraid to disturb the structural integrity. There’s a very large tower that’s like, balancing on the table and uh, I think I need four hands to get it all at once without crushing you.”    
  
“A real chilean miner situation,” Harry says mournfully.   
  
“I’m tweeting Elon Musk,” the stranger says, and then, with a wicked emphasis he adds, “The  _free hand of the market_ will help get you out _.”_  


Harry scowls, and three more books fall into his groin, so he supposes the stranger has a point. “Well you don’t have to stay,” he says crankily, closing his eyes. “Niall will be along at some point eventually because we close in three hours. Leave me here. I am become one with the compendiums. It was always going to go this way.”

“Not gonna leave you when you saved my life, book boy,” the stranger says again, a thick current of humor and teasing and still a little bit of worry and something like a soft hook, catching all of Harry’s attention. And Harry thinks that yes it really  _is_ nice, a nice voice and a nice kind of jaggedy, startling humor. Could belong in a black comedy, that. Could belong to a hero. “So tell me what you think about symbology.”  


	2. Terminal Infinity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Terminal Infinity might someday (if days have meaning) turn into something more but for now, putting this here

Terminal Infinity is closing. Terminal Infinity is opening.

“You’re late,” Liam says, coming up to Louis’ lefthand side with a cheeky grin.

“That got real old, real fast,” Louis says. He still lets Liam take a handful of crispy fries from the paper cup he’s juggling in one hand, carry-on dangerously wobbly in the crook of his elbow.

“Know who else is fast,  _Styles,”_ Liam says, through fries.

“Stop it,” Louis drawls, shaking the cup and trying to search for the crispiest ones while still dodging passengers through the terminal. It’s the usual, in Infinity—a lot of tears. Not all the sad kind. Louis looks up long enough to smile reassuringly at a woman, late fifties, sleeked-back hair, unremarkable clothing, the kind of clothing you wear when you don’t want to stand out. She’s got one of their flyers in her hand.

“Is this—“ the woman starts.

“Yes, it is,” Louis says. He hopes it sounds like it sounds when the others talk to the passengers, but he’s still new at this. Liam nods, and even just the nod seems to lighten whatever’s weighing the woman’s shoulders down.

“We’re part of your crew,” Liam says, “Don’t worry. You’ll get there. Right when you’re supposed to.”

“I’ve been waiting a very long time,” the woman says. The flyer’s got a thin stripe of rainbow on the edge. Louis can only just see the end of it.

“It’s never too late,” Louis says, “Not here. Not anymore.”

“I wasn’t joking though,” Liam says as they go down the gangway after checks. The alarm rings—Liam’s accidentally brought some errant hesitation in with him.

“Can’t have  _that,”_ Louis says, with a wry grin. Liam rolls his eyes.

“Ugh, it’s the guy in Baggage Unloading,” he finally admits, after Louis raises his eyebrows about a dozen times, and Liam has to go through the scanner three times before the hesitation’s gone. Heavy stuff, that. Terminal Infinity requires strict weight calibration.

“Just ask him  _out_ already,” Louis says.

“To where exactly?” Liam snarks.

“Or to when,” Louis says, “Is that the problem? Robbing the grave, are we, Li,”

“OI,” Liam says through a mouthful of the very last of Louis’ fries. Louis sighs, but lets him. They’re leaving the century of fast food behind for a while, so Louis likes to shore his stomach up for it.

“I’m pretty sure he’s new, like me,” Louis says. “You’re probably safe. You’re definitely safe. Us new sorts, we’re ok.”

Liam smiles at him over the rows of luggage and the strange gears and electrical fiddly bits. They weave down Terminal Infinity to the plane.

“Settling in then?” Liam asks.

“I think so,” Louis says, not looking at him. It’s a strange job, and not a particularly voluntary one, but it’s a good place to stop and think and breathe, which is something Louis hadn’t gotten a lot of, back in his own time outside of Infinity.

“Oh, speaking of good sorts, I wasn’t joking, guess who our illustrious captain is this time?” Liam says loudly, way too loudly as they enter the silver capsule.

Passengers are already lining up the walkway. They’re so quiet, this particular lot. Louis is running a few quips and jokes in his head to try and lighten them up—it’s one of the things he’s best at, he thinks. He’s good at making them laugh. Still figuring it out. But he’s distracted, so he misses Liam’s poke and stumbles forward into a familiar—fuck—a way too familiar form.

“Spacetime might be  _relative,”_ Harry says, “But you can always have a bit of mine.”

“For  _fuck’s sake,_ will you leave me be, _”_ Louis says from the vicinity of Harry’s pilot’s jacket. He doesn’t  _need_ the jacket, it’s always the temperature they need it to be, which is truly an improvement over the airplanes that Louis remembers from his particular time. But Harry wears it anyway, just like he wears that cheeky smirk every time Louis is working one of his flights. Just like he wears away at Louis’ stubborn, stubborn resolve to not be charmed.    


“All right,” Harry says, gently depositing Louis back onto his feet. Liam’s already grabbed their carry-ons to store, and he’s flipping the existential picker to its whirring, soothingly mechanical start. The plane doesn’t need it, but most of the passengers seem reassured by something to watch.   
  
“All right,” Louis says, brushing down his uniform, uselessly tugging it straight. His fingers still lingered on the unfamiliar metal tag.  _Temporal Flight Attendant,_ and underneath,  _Louis Tomlinson, 21st Century._  


“Don’t you have a job to do,” Louis says. “Something like, navigating this bucket of bolts to a thousand points of re-adjusted chronologies, I dunno. What you did in your human life to merit it, I cannot imagine.”    
  
Harry grins. “Love that you’re imagining,” he says.    
  
“Li and I shall dump you in the hundred years’ war,” Louis shoots back. Harry just grins wider. 

“I’m gonna change your mind,” Harry says, “Eventually.”    
  
“Hope you’ve got a lot of time on your hands,” Louis says. And then winces. Even Liam winces. 

“You’ll get better at it,” Liam calls from the back. “It’s a lot of metaphors to let go of.” 

Louis rolls his eyes so hard that it makes a very small passenger giggle. He stoops to pat him softly on the shoulder–a five-year-old, clutching a very ratty toy rabbit. Louis can  _feel_ the destination on him and smiles, and the kid smiles back. These are the best ones, the ones they’re dropping to the bed and the arms and a thousand bedtime stories.   
  
“Hey Lou,” Harry says. It startles Louis, who glances up to see that Harry’s paused in the middle of the aisle on his way back to the front. Harry  _winks,_ the demon. “All the time in the world.”  
  
  
***  
  


Terminal Infinity, with its mundane and calming passenger lounge. Louis wonders who chose mid-mod and sixties design for it all, those white chairs and the sunken conversation pit and little air plants (someone thinks they’re funny), the strange cut of his flight attendant’s uniform and the jaunty little hat and the folding over white collar bits. There’s a long couch, as long as it needs to be, and lots of people sitting that halfway-to-close distance that you sit from strangers you don’t know and don’t necessarily want to talk to, but with whom you feel kinship anyway. Despite yourself, maybe. 

There’s a miniature theatre in the corner for the kids. There are so many kids, lost kids, kids wrapped up in thick blankets and sat in velvet chairs that are child-sized, watching cartoons from every era. 

Amazing how cartoons were made across so many eras. Louis never knew that before coming here.

The main division in Terminal Infinity is between staff and passengers. Louis doesn’t know why he’s staff. One day a few months/years/infinities into the thing Liam tells Louis over a cup of very delicious chai that he think he’s a flight attendant now because he could never  _choose,_ back in the place where he came from. 

“So now I go everywhere. No single place for me, right? Makes sense. Failed Baggage Unloading twice,” Liam says. Louis tastes cardomom and ginger and the elusive wonder of no judgment. 

“Here  _now,”_ Louis says. “You know, for a given value of now.” Louis hadn’t had any trouble with Baggage Unloading. He’s always been rather talented at that part. Too talented. 

He remembers walking through the arched silver gateway with its enormous glass bubble and the beautiful guy with the dark eyebrows who’d been there to help him through. “Bit  _Jetsons,”_ Louis had said, and the guy had laughed, and laughed. He’d patted Louis on the back on the way through and said, “Good job you, barely a carry-on. Hope to make it to attendant myself, some day.” For now the guy at Baggage Unloading takes a million pieces of luggage away from the adults (none, Louis notices, from the kids). Louis hopes that Liam will still be here when he does. They’ll show the guy the good fries and see if he can beat Louis’ high score on the arcade games in the corner (doubtful, but Louis likes to be sportsmanlike).  
  
Harry sits on the very end of the last row of velvet seats in the tiny kids’ theatre. His knees are absurdly high, can’t be comfortable. He shares a basket of jellybeans with a small boy who has made them all watch something called  _Mighty Mouse_ three times in a row. The kid wraps his fist around jellybeans and watches Harry carefully, every single time he takes one, so it’s a laborious process. And Harry just keeps holding the basket out, as long as it takes.  

 

***  
  


Louis watches four different sunsets at the same time from the pilots’ lounge.

He’s the only one of them who can do this. It had started in very small ways. Once, there had been a monsoon and Louis had been watching it, thinking of the indeterminate future growth that might result from it. And suddenly he had seen verdant vines springing up, the kind that roll into ferocious existence after a monsoon, flickering between raindrops.

Once, Liam had made a crack about sunny skies while they landed in a snowstorm but Louis had looked up and seen an alpine sun, two hundreds years of rising elevation into the future. Once, memorably, a rainbow had appeared in the middle of the aisle on the airplane, and Louis had jolted the drink cart two seats back and spilled hot coffee on his sleeve cuffs. Nobody had seen it but the teenage girl taking crackers out of Louis’ hand, and she hadn’t made a sound, but she’d grinned, so big.

Once, on the way to a land bridge that Louis hadn’t even remembered from a history book (they’d dropped an entire family with many grandparents there, warm fur strapped all around them in ingenious ways), there had been a very large dinosaur. Louis had grabbed Harry’s forearm and learned, intimately, both that Harry is afraid of dinosaurs and someone who puts himself in between his fears and other people. So Louis hadn’t even been able to tease Harry for the reaction, not even for the face he made when Louis let go of his arm and the entire dino vanished.  

“What’s it for?” Louis had asked Liam, and Liam only shrugged, and smiled, as was apparently the standard around Terminal Infinity.

“What’s it not for?” Liam said. And well. They all had their things.

Louis was practicing it mainly by watching multiple sunsets. The pilots’ lounge was up a singular glass staircase from the passenger lounge, accessible to everybody. But out of some unspoken respect only staff ever came up here. And tonight it’s just him, and the glass in every direction.

And apparently Harry. Harry ducks through the trapdoor from the staircase when the first sunset shifts purple, the second sunset bursts through a cloud, the third sunset is hidden in fog, and the fourth sunset (this one is over an ocean) dips into the water.

“I was watching for a green flash and you distracted me,” Louis says.

“I’m sorry you can’t take your eyes of me,” Harry says, and promptly ruins everything about his own suavity by making finger guns.

Louis rolls his eyes. “You’re here late. I thought everyone else had gone off to the cabins.” Liam had taken up decorating. His entire suite was decorative ceramics from various terminals, marker-art city names and times. Louis had not been surprised to learn that Liam had a collector bug. He had been surprised to see the city-specific coffee mugs from places like Pompeii, Constantinople, and the Library of Alexandria. 

“Or it could be early,” Harry shrugs.

“I’m watching sunsets,” Louis points out. He blinks a little, to slide back to seeing what Harry sees, and it’s a deep dark near-night sky in Terminal Infinity, Point Zero, Origin Point, Point of All Return. There are stars above. “Ah, I see, you looking at stars?”

“I don’t have your gifts,” Harry says. He walks over and sits on the carpeted floor next to Louis and Louis lets him, because — because he didn’t expect the sincerity with which Harry said that. Not flirting, this time, just simple, like it’s obvious.

Louis nudges Harry with his shoulder. Harry’s close but not too close, but his thick pilot’s jacket is gone and he’s just in an old-fashioned button-up shirt, off-white with little pearl buttons. It looks like Louis’ parents’ generation, or maybe even his grandparents’ generation. He’s always thought Harry’s hair was an affectation but it’s probably not.

“You’re the pilot, though,” Louis says. “What gifts do the pilots get?”

Harry pulls something out of his pocket. Louis has to lean closer to look: it’s a pocket watch, a skeleton watch, open in the face and heavy with gears and fine, jewel-like pieces. Maybe actual jewels. Louis doesn’t know anything about watches, and Harry smells good and feels warm across the inches between them and Louis isn’t even sure if he’s ever seen Harry outside of a pilot’s jacket but he’s got a long stretch of skin from the unbuttoned collar and it’s awful. Great. Awful.

“Wow, that’s hilarious,” Louis says. “Does it run?”

“It’s very high craftsmanship,” Harry sniffs. And it does look like it’s running. Running down what, Louis isn’t sure. It has extra hands, in extra colors. It’s got a magnetic tick to it, soothing and maybe just slightly off the regular, like a syncopated pattern, like a jazz percussion.

“I think we get a very good sense of direction,” Harry continues, “But that’s always been my failing. Is that why I’m here?” It’s a rhetorical question. They ask it occasionally in a way that brooks no answer. Some questions are meant for listening, not answering. “I was always going somewhere very fast. One place, one path, no stopping. Now I go everywhere, every possible place, everyone else’s destination.”

“That’s funny,” Louis says, “I’m the opposite. So many directions all the time, always starting over. I didn’t even have enough baggage to bring through to trip the alarms, I never had a watch, I never had a way to get back to anything I’d ever started. No baggage at all. Zayn complimented me on it.”

“Zayn  _would,”_ Harry laughs. It’s a little sad though, laden with the weight of their confessions. Harry runs the chain of the pocket watch through his long fingers, and Louis watches him and wishes, suddenly, for an extremely small dinosaur. He’s going to get better at his aiming through the chronologies. He’s going to have to look up when the world was only very tiny dinosaurs.

“Hey, do you want to see the sunsets?” Louis asks. He puts out a hand. 

Harry looks at it for a second, his face lit from the outside and the inside, and then he moves closer, still holding the watch. They’re sitting on the floor half-facing each other, half-side by side, the glass windows and the stars all around. The pilots’ lounge has a glass roof, and the airplanes are nested out from the terminal like lake birds. Louis puts his hand on Harry’s shoulder.

He slips into the right timezone to find a sunset. Sunset, sunset, sunset. They’re mostly orange, but there’s a massive pink one and he’s glad for it because Harry is clearly somebody who appreciates a splash of pink. Harry gasps.

“You can see so many things,” Harry marvels. Four, five, six sunsets. Louis gasps too. He’s never managed to see this many times at the same—well—time, he’s never managed to open up the slipping boundaries this way. It’s a little intimidating but it’s also gloriously gentle. Just light and light and light, colliding at the edges and turning rainbow. A blue sunset through fog. A coral-red sunset over an island. A snow sunset reflecting in grey stone mountains.

“I’ve always been able to see a lot of things but I don’t know if I’ve ever been able to get to them. Always had rather crap timing,” Louis says.

“Hey, Louis,” Harry says, and he’s shifting but carefully, not losing Louis’ touch on his shoulder, but coming closer, and Louis can’t look away from the sunsets or he’ll lose them, but he feels the weight and the rattle of the chain as Harry lays it in his lap, gently, across his knee and up his thigh. And Harry leaves his big warm hand there, on the interspace between Louis’ knee and hip—“This could help the timing.”

“You can’t  _give me this,”_ Louis splutters, but the end of his sentence is swallowed up in  _Harry kissing him._

Louis already has his mouth open in indignation so it’s, suddenly, a little sloppy and warm and close, but Harry just works the angle of his head exactly right, catches Louis’ bottom lip with his own. Louis moves into it without even thinking about it. It’s warm, soft, unhesitating,  _excellent._ Louis’ hand clutches on Harry’s shoulder and Harry makes a noise of satisfaction. Louis kisses him back, feels the friction of his light stubble, the strangeness of another person after all this time, the light and bursting happiness of it, like a delicate bubble between them. He’s closed his eyes, but the sunsets must still be there because the light is still pressing through his closed eyelids, diffuse and vivid.  


	3. Famous/Famous/Terrible

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ooooh I just remembered this one and there's a third scene I should(will) finish... 
> 
> The prompt was: "i wish you would write a fic where Louis and Harry are talented and successful solo singers and they meet backstage at the tribute concert for Fleetwood Mac"

**1.**

_Don’t be sick,_ Gemma texts, which is exactly as helpful as it had been when Harry was ten.

Not helpful.

 _I’m fine,_ Harry texts, and he sends the upside-down smile emoji, which on reflection is maybe not the most  _fine_  of emojis.

_Well then don’t fuCK iT uPPP_

She texts back. And, because it was them,  _proud of you._

He knows, of course. They tell him often, they’d told him that every week long before nights like this, back when nights like this were only things that Harry would’ve dreamed about and never told anyone for fear that they’d laugh. Now management was on his back to talk more, tweet more, answer more questions—like he even had anything to say yet past  _I can’t believe I’m here, I can’t believe this is happening, I can’t believe how happy I am._

Happy still came with a crapton of nerves. Harry had thought he might avoid that part. Gemma texts, because she knew about the nerves. Harry sticks his tongue fully out at the screen, and then airplane-modes his phone and puts it in the backstage phone pen that these fancy awards backstages have started sporting since around 2010.

Just twenty minutes, or so. Twenty minutes until he’d go out there and introduce them.

Harry gets his hands halfway up to his hair before he remembers that he wasn’t supposed to touch it, and then he starts to put his hands in his pockets before he remembers that there weren’t any in this suit because it would’ve spoiled the sillhouette, and then he just stands there looking stupid. And nervous. And maybe shaking, a trifle. The backstage is quiet because of the dampening of the wings and the great acoustics in this place, mic’d up to perfection, Harry imagines. He was going to be singing into those mics soon, and captured on a million videos, broadcasted all over the world.

 _That_ wasn’t new. But doing it with them was new. Jesus.

“Are you  _ok?”_ Somebody says, patiently, like he’d been saying it a while. Harry wheels around, too sharply because they were new shoes and they had an edge on the heel he hadn’t worn down yet. And suddenly there’s a tiny, unbelievably hot man in front of him with his arms folded, and he looks cross.

“What?” Harry asks. Twenty minutes. Nineteen minutes? Eighteen minutes. Why had he put his bloody phone away already? What if they forgot to cue him?

The man is probably stage crew, here to handle Harry. Harry has been wondering why there isn’t anyone around.

“What if I fuck up?” he whispers. Wait, NO. He’d totally said,  _When do I go on?_ Hadn’t he?

“Hey, hey,” says the man. A man, for all that he was lithe and small and sharp, a swoop of hair over his forehead. Harry wouldn’t be Harry if he weren’t capable of checking somebody out even in the middle of a panic.

The man scoots right into Harry’s space. Harry usually minded. He finds he doesn’t mind, this time.

“It gets you, doesn’t it,” the man says. There’s a wall near the wing that Harry had stationed himself by, and Harry is crowded into it by the man’s pushing forward. Something about his face is ticking at Harry’s brain, something familiar, but he can’t think what it is. Maybe he’d been around in the backstage earlier in the night.

“What?” Harry asks. He is aware that there was already a line of sweat near his ears. Not the best look. He hadn’t even done one song yet.

“The pressure,” the man says. He’d taken Harry’s hands down from where they were hanging in space, and he’s rubbing soothing circles on them with his thumbs. “Whoever the fuck you are, they must love you.”

“Ah, everybody loves me,” Harry says, terrible thing to say, but it had been true his whole life. The man smiles and it’s an enormous smile, absolutely enormous, Harry loves that smile with a blind loyalty that doesn’t even make sense. There’s some kind of percussion coming from the stage and then somebody talks about something, some lesser award before the big event. This stage-hand man looks almost bored with the whole thing. He’s probably staffed a million of these shows.

“You must be fucking Harry Styles, we meet at last,” the man says. Harry ducks his chin. He was slightly surprised but then again, he was getting pretty famous this year.

“Well fucking Harry Styles,” the man says, “I’m not supposed to be here,” and he throws a wink at Harry, and Harry feels himself bite his own lower lip, which is ridiculous—“Honestly, I get restless at these things, snuck around to have a look, didn’t think I’d find you.”

“I’m waiting  _on my mark,”_ Harry says, voice cracking a little.

“What a good boy,” the man says, and Harry did  _not_ mean to make an inappropriate face but he is terribly afraid that he did. Panic takes all the inhibition away, even more than usual.

“You must have people here,” the man murmurs. “Some date, some handlers, some bodyguard, people who know what to do when you’re all—“ he shakes his hand in a  _woo_ kind of gesture. Then he puts the hand on Harry’s jaw, inspecting his face.

Harry feels a little insulted. “I’m fine,” he insists.

“You’re not fine,” the man says, “You’re a bloody liar.” He grins at Harry again, big and pleased. Then the grin drops.

“Oi,” the gorgeous man said, “You’re not one of those who needs cocaine or summat, huh?”

“ _No,”_ Harry says, insulted again. The man shrugs. He’s not touching Harry’s face anymore and Harry wishes he would, even though Harry is pretty sure Harry actually has a show to play, in he-doesn’t-know-how-many-minutes.

“They seem to start so young these days, you never know,” the man says, diplomatically. He picks Harry’s hands up again, and just holds them. They were shaking, and now they’re not shaking, in the stranger’s small but steady, warm hands. He has calluses on his fingertips and Harry wonders if he plays music, too. Maybe it’s ten minutes now. Maybe it’s five. The man will let him know. Harry trusts him. He’s not sure why.

“You seem better,” the man observes.

“It helps,” Harry says, moving his hands a bit, under the man’s touch. His eyes have captivating crinkles in the corners. His cheekbones are to die for. Harry is pretty sure he’s supposed to be doing something.

The noise and the talking on the stage has started to dim and Harry remembers, then, that this is his cue. Oh right, damn, he had a  _cue._

“Well,” the man says, “Go make ‘em all love you.”

Harry’s about to walk right out there, live his biggest dream, when he stops. “Hey, what’s your name?” He throws back, over his shoulder. Pair of eyes like that, pair of hands like that, Harry can’t just  _not ask._

The man laughs. He’s walking away, already, and Harry looks at the rest of him for just long enough to realize that he isn’t dressed anything like stage crew.

“Louis,” he calls over his shoulder. And obviously, obviously it’s  _him._ Harry can’t believe he didn’t recognize, but he’s so different and so much better and so much more beautiful in person, and Harry has to fucking go perform, it’s time to step on the stage and hopefully use human language, and he’s living a night he never thought could possibly happen, and he’s going to play with one of his favorite musicians in the world.

And then he’s going to find his  _other_ favorite musician in the world, and introduce himself properly.

 

**2.**

_get the fffffffff back,_ Zayn texts, which Louis ignores.

Ignoring Zayn is, by this point, a bedrock of their artistic partnership and the true friendship that came along with it. Louis doesn’t want to chance upsetting that, does he? He continues his meandering creep toward the backstage. He’s mildly hampered in stealth by the horrendously Italian-tight hip cut of this suit. This suit goes a long way toward making Louis feel that He’s Still Got It or whatever awful thing one of his sisters is going to sardonically say after they see his show tonight, but it only goes a very short way toward helping him hoist himself into the weird maintenance hallway that’s perfectly accessible to audience members from the front of the house if they’re willing to climb halfway up the wall and crawl a little.

 _nobody takes this long to go to the bathroom,_ Zayn texts.

Louis drops down to the floor, successfully backstage. Louis, 1; Suit, 0.

 _i’m only playing wrap-up, it’s gonna be at least an hour, I wanna watch the show from the real seats,_ he texts back, just so Zayn won’t have a flipping heart attack. He could be such a rule follower. It was a tragic waste of those eyebrows.

Louis hates being in a tv audience. He always has. Lifetime awards and tribute shows are better than when he’s actually been nominated for something and has to sit there feeling antsy and a little sick and pathetically wishing someone would hold his hand under the table (his mum did, for the first Grammy, which was great. Zayn did, one time, when Louis’ ex was up against him in the same category, and then Zayn made him swear to never, ever mention it again. Louis tends to bring it up when they get emotionally drunk, but that’s not terribly often these days. Not having so many toxic exes has helped).

Louis loves watching shows from the wings. Nothing is as good as playing himself, but it soothes the itching kind of crazy-making feeling in his head to feel, even sneakily, part of the show in a different way from the audience.

Sometimes Louis hates this about himself. But the competitive, comparing ticking in his head is probably what gave him his career. He can’t detach, so he tries to immerse.

Also, he wants to see Harry Styles in person. Confirm, for his own private sense of closure, that Harry Styles is not in any way as attractive as Drunk Louis thought that he was at the GQ party six months ago, when Harry Styles fully ignored Louis.

Louis rounds a corner into the true backstage, can hear the show now, and there’s an enjoyable lack of security and people to stop him (idiots! production has really gone downhill on these one-off events, Louis suspects stupid labels trying to save money keeping them understaffed). And there’s Harry Styles.

And fuck Louis, honestly. He’s just as gorgeous as Drunk Louis had thought (and said, mournful on Zayn’s shoulder, much later that same night).

Harry Styles is hunched over a little strangely, though, gorgeous face looking less like a rockstar and more like the face you make when you’re ticking up the ramp of a rollercoaster that your friends hassled you onto even though you’re bloody scared of heights. He’s bricking it.

Louis is up close before he can think about it. He blames the suit, giving him undue airs of confidence.

“Hey,” he says, “you ok?”

Harry doesn’t say anything, still has his back turned, is sort of wringing his hands. He’s sweating.

“Are you OK?” Louis says sharply. Harry wheels around, clearly startled.

“What?” he asks dimly. Ugh, that voice. And Louis realizes Harry’s in a full-blown panic because he’s barely even making eye contact with Louis. And then he whispers, clear as day,  _“What if I fuck up?”_

Oh, poor baby. Louis remembers these days. Louis thinks Harry’s team are fucking idiots, not remembering that Harry is still so new.

“Hey, hey,” he says, clucking a little and sounding horrifyingly like his mum. But Harry’s a  _baby,_ for all that he towers over Louis, and Harry’s not even looking at him, and his hands are floating weirdly in the air, and shaky.

“It gets you, doesn’t it,” Louis says.

Louis steps forward and Harry kind of collapses into the wall behind him. Whoops.

“What?” Harry asks.

“The pressure,” Louis clarifies, trying to get across that honestly, it’s gonna be ok. Honestly, Louis has been here before. Harry’s moved his hands out towards Louis, kind of obedient in that automatic performer way, like he thinks Louis is here to fix his mic or check his wires. Louis just plucks his hands out of the air without thinking, because Louis is a hot mess. He tries to think of something soothing to say.

“Whoever the fuck you are, they must love you,” he says, sort of a joke, because everybody knows who Harry is.

“Ah, everybody loves me,” Harry says without any weight or hubris to it. Louis’ face smiles despite himself. And despite his own inanity, Harry seems to be coming out of the panic. Louis focuses in on his face, because that had always helped him back in the day.

“You  _must_  be fucking Harry Styles,” Louis says, trying very hard to be sarcastic and not necessarily succeeding. “We meet at last.” Harry has only made a polite face. At least he’s not looking entirely disgusted at Louis’ presence. And Louis is the only person here, random awkward past encounters at GQ parties or not. 

“Well, fucking Harry Styles,” Louis says— _shut up?_ he tells himself,  _stop saying ‘fucking’??—_ “I’m not supposed to be here, honestly I get restless at these things, snuck around to have a look, didn’t think I’d find you.” What is he, apologizing? Rambling? Crazy? The suit was cutting off too much circulation. Harry’s face was  _so nice_ and his hands were  _big._

“I’m waiting on my mark,” Harry says.

“Good boy,” Louis says.  _MY GOD._ Thank god Harry is playing in about two seconds. Thank god Harry looks like he’s feeling better. Why was Harry alone?

“You must have people here,” he says, irritated at them and wishing he knew who to be irritated at. Everybody in the industry knew that Harry Styles was the real deal, was famous for sincerity, was going to take a thing like this too seriously. “Some date, some handlers, some bodyguard, people who know what to do when you’re all—“ he shook his hand, unable to articulate it in the hushed backstage. He watches himself take Harry’s jaw and inspect his face.

“I’m fine,” Harry whispers, sinking his face a little against Louis’ hand. Panic is a crazy thing. Louis remembers crying on the shoulder of a very patient bodyguard before his first SNL. Somebody  _else’s_ bodyguard. 

“You’re not fine, you’re a bloody liar,” Louis says, weirdly pleased, before a second explanation for Harry’s weirdness occurs to him.

“Oi, you’re not one of those who needs cocaine or summat, huh?” He snaps.

“No,” Harry says. Louis shrugs, sort of apologetic, sort of not. It would fit.

“They seem to start so young these days, you never know,” Louis says, realizing a second after he does that it makes him sound about fifty. Well, Harry knows he’s been around. Harry at least knows his career, Louis would think.

They stand there. It’s nice.

“You seem better,” Louis observes.

“It helps,” Harry says simply, swaying his hands a little. Physical touch? Distraction? Louis being an annoying idiot? He has no idea. And the cue’s coming. The important thing is, Harry’s ok now. Harry’s more than ok—Harry’s a rockstar. Seeing him in the secret panic of the pre-show has only confirmed that for Louis. That this is how intensely Harry cares about it, still? It’s all so real, for him.

“Well, go make ‘em all love you,” he says. Like they don’t already.

He’s walking away when Harry asks.

“Hey, what’s your name?”

Louis actually nearly trips. He blames the suit. He’d just—he’d just assumed. Not that Harry would care, of course, but at least that Harry would remember, or know who he was  _at all._

“Louis,” he says.

He doesn’t say,  _the guy whose collab you turned down a year ago,_ or  _the guy who convinced your execs to let you do that first tour, because I loved your EP,_ or  _we met, you know, at that GQ party?_

After all, it’s time for Harry to go steal the show.

Louis pulls his phone out and texts Zayn on the way back.  _no harm no foul, coming back from the bathroooooom nowwwww and I have news_

_I hate you_

_what news_

_what_

Zayn texts immediately. Louis shuffles from one foot to the other. Harry is out there being as gregarious as Louis knows he is as a performer, and soon he’s gonna open that stupid mouth and sing in a way that melts the base of Louis’ spine.

 _we’re going to whatever afterparty Styles goes to, fyi,_ he texts Zayn.

 _LOUIS. WE HAVE A PACT,_ Zayn texts back.

Louis knows. But he also knows that Harry Styles wasn’t looking at him the way you look at somebody that you want to ignore. And he really, really wants to figure that out.


	4. A Body in a Hospital

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My sometimes latent obsession with grey's anatomy really jumped out in this one

It feels wrong to be a body in a hospital.

Bodies, of course, are everywhere in the hospital. Bodies in every state of dress and undress and duress; bodies coming down to their composite parts and becoming part of life-saving machines. Life-saving bodies, the doctors and (even more so) nurses and orderlies and otherwise, being always more physical than you think they will be, using the heft of their shoulders or arms or the pounding of their hands. _Stay_ , it’s not a gentle command with a press of a palm on your shoulder. They yank you into staying.

Nevertheless it feels wrong, to be a functional body in a hospital, to be an agentic body, with all of the social niceties still wrapped around it like dressing. “Sorry,” Louis says automatically when somebody bumps his shoulder (an orderly? A technician? A nurse? A ward assistant? A healthcare counselor? Like white blood cells, so many of them rushing past). Somebody, down the hall, is wailing. Walk a few steps and a new kind of etiquette applies.

It feels wrong to be a body that’s ok, in a hospital.

Liam takes his elbow. Louis has the sensation that it’s drifting away and the wonderment that it took so long, for his body to come down to its composite parts, before he realizes that Liam’s just taken his elbow like a normal person, in a normal hand, that it’s all still working and he’s being walked down the hall. Everything attached.

“What?” Louis asks.

Liam looks soft, and repeats himself. Louis has the sudden conviction that he’s been talking for a long time. Hours, maybe.

“When did you eat last, Tommo?” Liam asks. Liam is wearing a sweater, when did that happen? Louis looks down at the elbow that Liam is holding and notices that he’s wearing a sweater too. Liam’s sweater, with the zigzag stripes like Charlie Brown. Liam’s apartment is closest to the hospital. Not that any of them live close to the hospital. A blatant disregard for the concerns of the body.

“Interesting question,” Louis says, “Very interesting. Li, did you know that there are whole groups of people who can’t digest alcohol? I read about it.”

“Did you now. We’re going to have dinner, Zayn brought it in. You need to eat, love,” Liam says, walking them into the lounge. Another lounge in an endless series of rotating lounges. Or maybe Louis has been rotating through the same lounge.

“But they still drink it. Why? It’s like a tradition from the time when they could digest alcohol. Isn’t that amazing? All the form none of the function. Well, more of the function,” Louis says. Zayn is here too, isn’t that nice. Zayn is rising to meet them and take Louis’ other elbow to take him the four steps forward to the row of chairs and help lower him down. Like he’s old before his time.

“I’m not old yet, age is just a number,” Louis muses.

Liam and Zayn give each other that look that they think nobody else can see, but everybody can see. The middle-aged women across the lounge leaning against each other in tiredness can see. The kid who’s sleeping underneath the bench of chairs in the middle of the room could see it, if he weren’t hampered by his closed eyes. How inconvenient, bodies.

“I can see that,” Louis says. He blinks and he’s holding a sandwich.

“Not for the whole day,” Liam is saying to Zayn, over Louis’ head. It’s never been fair, being shorter. Louis philosophically takes a bite of sandwich. Why do people like this kind of thing? It sits in his mouth.

“He needs to sleep,” Zayn says.

“He’s fine,” Louis says. He’s been saying that for a while. “I read about it in a National Geographic.” The lounges are littered with National Geographics. Like it helps to stare at seals instead of the hospital walls. Actually, it does help.

“Swallow, love,” Zayn says, nudging Louis with his shoulder. Oh, right. Louis swallows.

“Can’t you get him to go home for a bit?” Liam asks.

Zayn shakes his head. Liam watches Zayn, and Zayn watches Louis. Louis watches the kid who’s sleeping.

“I’m not tired,” Louis notes, even though he’s been off-and-on-again awake for two days. Or one extremely long day. Who came up with the concept of a day? Those stupid agentic bodies and their concepts.

“I’m fine,” he says, again. A pile of determinate little _I’m fine_ ’s litter the lounge, stacked up next to the National Geographics. _I’m fine. It’s fine. She’s fine._ The doctors are going to come through the door and say _Lottie’s fine_. She’s always been fine. She would never drink the coffee here. She would never leave their two bedroom apartment without driving Louis mad, taking an hour for makeup. She would never not take care of the spongey bits inside. She would never skip yogurt and checkups and the gym. She would never tell him to shut up about the natgeo story. She would think it was interesting. She would never not be fine.

“Louis,” Liam says. Soft, and patient, no matter how many hours, and how many times he’s had to say it. Louis is staring at the carpet or at the kid asleep on the carpet or at the germs on the kid asleep on the carpet and valiantly keeping himself from going over there and screaming about taking better care, in a hospital, before you get to a hospital, taking better care of the kid or of your sister or of the million, million upon million composite parts that make up the precious body of an agentic, irreplaceable sister.

“What?” Louis says. He’s got the sandwich balled up in his fist, and it looks like he’s eaten half of it. There are crumbs down his face. He brushes some of them off. Etiquette, you know, it’s a muscle memory.

There’s a guy in front of them, one of the white blood cells.

“Mr. Tomlinson? Are you the family?” He says. Louis blinks at him and he can’t really make out anything at all about this stranger. All the details of all the people Louis doesn’t know are just sliding away, like water.

“They’re driving. Long bloody way from home,” Louis says. And isn’t that the bloody truth.

“I need to talk to the family, can you confirm that you’re the family?” The stranger says. Several times, Louis thinks. It’s like a parallel universe where all the people are kind and all the bodies are cruel, here.

“Yes,” Louis says.

The stranger who’s speaking for the hospital is forward now. Big eyes, that’s what Louis can make out, experience and calm and a radiating sense of fine, like he’s picking out every stacked template and nodding even though he’s heard it all before.

“I’m Harry, and Charlotte is ok. She’s going to be fine,” he says, and Louis collapses.

Not such a functional body, he thinks with peculiar satisfaction on the way down to some stranger’s arms.


	5. Weekly Enemies Brunch

It wasn’t like Louis to be late for Weekly Enemies Brunch. Harry was, therefore, occupying himself by scanning the menu for the most passive-aggressively hipster combination that he could devise out of the health conscious substitutions, deconstructed open-face non-sandwiches, and market priced pourover blends of indeterminate, esoteric origin.

He’s just ordered a double-avocado on gluten-free chia seed-infused breadlets when Louis plops himself down on the chair directly next to Harry, not across the table like any other normal human.

Of course, Louis is hardly a normal human.

“Wow, he deigns to grace us. Mr. Tomlinson,” Harry says, interrupting himself.

“ _Mr_. Styles,” Louis says, grinning.

The waiter, a twenty-something Writing A Screenplay Type named Felix, smiles indulgently. The waitstaff all know them. The entire restaurant knows them, Harry suspects. Martin at the breakfast bar has already sent over an extra glass of water because he knows that Harry can’t tolerate spice, but will pour hot sauce over his eggs as soon as Louis raises his eyebrows.

“Sorry though,” Louis yawns. His eyes look puffy, which doesn’t take away from the absurd length of his eyelashes nor the steep rise of his cheekbones. It’s unusual, and there’s a flush on his forehead and a stray speckle of toothpaste next to his earlob. Harry realizes that he’s inspecting Louis’ face, and stops, but does not feel guilty. It’s good to know your enemies.

“Late night,” Louis finishes at the tail-end of another yawn, so it sounds more like  _lay nigh-yuuph_ , with a pink flash of tongue that disappears behind a wry little grin.

Harry sighs pointedly and waves Felix away. Louis rubs his face. His hair is sticking straight up in a little patch over his forehead, and Harry does not alert him to this.

“Oh, no, the almond croissant--” Louis starts.

“I already put in for it,” Harry says, since the bakery section of the restaurant sells out like the proverbial hotcakes on a saturday morning. “I have to say I’m looking forward to telling Marta that I’m more committed to the work than you are, again.”

“I still brought the reports, cranky,” Louis says, pulling several reams of paper out of a grey messenger bag that he’d decorated with sharpie in a hundred different strange doodles. 

They’ve been having Weekly Enemies Brunch for two months now, and yet Harry has still only gotten a good look at half the doodles. They’re just so intricate, mandalas and math references that he’d gone home to look up, whimsical, joking things like the equation for velocity next to a fanciful rocket sketch. Louis always brings the beat-up messenger bag. Harry brings a filthy expensive leather satchel that was a gift from Gemma, and Louis never glances twice at it.

“You print these things just to annoy me,” Harry says, taking the papers and spreading them out to the left of his cutlery.

“Funny how it works eeeeevery time,” Louis says, with something that sounds like fondness. He eyes the fancy pourover coffee that Harry’s already got in front of him, shrugs, and pulls the mug over to his side to obliterate it with cream.

“Hey,” Harry protests absently, flipping through reports. When it’s his time to share analytics he brings them loaded on an iPad with a dynamically updating chart notebook, because he is not a  _complete barbarian._ Not because he enjoys the way that Louis gets a little soft and lost whenever he’s impressed by Harry’s data viz skills and trying extremely hard to not show it.

“Sorry again, I suppose,” Louis says, with another sleepy grin.

Harry eyes him over the reports. Louis is always casual, while Harry usually wears a button-down for these meetings. But today Louis is extremely casual, with a long pullover about three sizes too big for him, and soft sweatpants that don’t look like they’d hide much of anything if Louis hadn’t been curled up on the chair with his legs folded under the table.

Weekly Enemies Brunch was an absurd idea, just absurd enough to work. It had started because Mega Exchanges Unlimited, a rightful and benevolent empire of modern business and the home of Harry’s brilliant and game-changing analytics team, had been felled by the horrific upstarts of Ultimate Conglomeration Corp. In the galactic collision that was two international businesses transferring ownership via the complicated political games of the executives heavens, Louis’ and Harry’s teams had gotten smashed together and told to  _play nice or else._

They were enemies from the start, obviously. Before the start. If they’d gone to kindergarten together, Harry was convinced, he’d have launched a frontal assault on Louis from the sandpits.   
  
He was just so fucking  _intolerable._  Louis led the mirror-image analytics team for Ultimate Conglomeration, and like the leader they were scrappy and undiplomatic and brash, steamrolling over Harry’s careful processes and comfortable conventions. And ok, maybe they were brilliant, but that didn’t make them any less terrible. And to make it worse, Louis had emerged from the supernova shuffle with an spot on the internal corporate hierarchy above Harry’s, his little avatar blinking like a _fuck you_  from a higher spot on the tree every time Harry had to look up an HR promotions chain.    
  
So, enemies. Enemies forever.

But modern life being what it was, the absurd solution to working together was a once-a-week tactical meeting. Harry and Louis had independently discovered that attempts to make contact during the work week usually devolved into stroppy fights over whose office building was going to be chosen, who made the better coffee, and Louis’ general attitude that he couldn’t handle a “Harry Migraine” and the fluorescent lighting at the same time. Thus Weekly Enemies Brunch was born.

“Harrrrry,” Louis says, poking Harry with the edge of his shoe. “What’s your malfunction? Is it the spike in transfers, because I think that’s a seasonal artifact.”

“I’ll have Chelsea run a factorial analysis, you know how killer she is at telling us whether effects are real,” Harry sniffs.  

Louis nods. “No debate from me,” he says when Harry gives him a skeptical look, “Chelsea’s a baller. I’ve been trying to poach her to my team. Harry. What’s wrong with you this morning? I’ve already eaten half the croissant and normally you’d be throwing coffee on me to get at the best bit of the filling.”

Harry sighs. Louis is balancing a crispy croissant piece in two delicate fingers, and he’s still grinning, so soft and messy in the backlight from the window, the blue of his eyes softened for once.

“I just think you should take our brunch meeting seriously,” Harry says. “And not, you know.”   
  
“I know?” Louis says, mouthful of croissant and pointing a butter knife dangerously close to Harry’s shoulder. “I know what?”

“Not get  _distracted_ , by  _late nights_ ,” Harry says.

“Oh, yeah? Am I supposed to be sorry?” Louis says, something glinting under the surface of his expression. He’s still folded up in the chair, so close that Harry can practically feel the warmth from his arm. He’s like a tiny shark, easy to underestimate. Harry shifts in his chair, cranky and disturbed and feeling passive-aggressive, like there’s an itch scampering around his skin that he can’t catch.

“Like it was even worth it, probably,” Harry says, unable to stop himself.

“Interesting question,” Louis says, poking at the almond croissant with a knife and segmenting off a healthy chunk which he pushes onto Harry’s plate. Harry likes the thick middle of the pastries where the filling is richest, and Louis likes the browned edges. Louis looks up from the plate and back to Harry’s face. It’s like it slows time, Louis’ slow, sweeping eyelids. Harry can’t look away from his face, from the unconscious edge of his tongue coming between his teeth.

“Well at least  _Late Night_  was an all right kisser, can’t say Enemies Brunch provides that benefit,” Louis says. 

“Whatever,” Harry scoffs, coffee-deprived and unable to handle the way that Louis’ hair is still sticking up, plummeting deeper into insanity, “I’m sure I’m better.”

A laugh erupts out of Louis. Harry loves it when he laughs like this, which is so rare around the office, eyes closed, mouth open in uncontrolled delight. “I dunno, I’d have to see the reports,” Louis gasps out.

So really, truly, obviously Louis is entirely responsible for the fact that Harry closes the gap of breakfast table between them, puts a hand on Louis’ neck and a grip into Louis’ oversized pullover, and shows him.

“Oh,” Louis gasps, against Harry’s mouth but definitely not away from it.

Harry is an excellent kisser, is the thing. In most of life he’s clumsy half the time and too controlled the other half, but once he can close the gap of socially acceptable distance, the game changes. Kissing is a matter of breathing into somebody else’s rhythm and finding the beat of it, it’s a matter of listening and pushing and pulling, and Harry just  _loves that._  
  
Louis’ face is warm. His hair is softer and silkier than Harry imagined, and the jolt of his jaw as Harry moves close is so much more desperate and vulnerable than Harry could have imagined. He’s weak for it. They press together softly at first, gentle and careful, and then Harry finds the right sliding angle against Louis’ bottom lip to nudge it open, and he’s lost to the silky heat of Louis’ mouth, the flickering, curious touch of his tongue.

Louis slides halfway into Harry’s lap, and then starts pulling himself back, so Harry tightens his hand in Louis’ pullover and doesn’t let him, winds him closer. He’s rewarded with another jolt of shivery, wanting tension in Louis’ body, and then Louis gives over the angle of the kiss and lets Harry have it, scorching and soft and varied. Louis kisses like he can’t make up his mind, like he’s shocked, like he’s wanted this forever, like he’s drunk. He’s small but vividly overwhelming in Harry’s arms, like a shot of espresso, like a too-rich brunch entree. Harry can feel the press of Louis’ knees into his thighs, the soft give of the pullover under his palm. He wants to bite at Louis’ lips for hours, wants to drag heated kisses across his face and watch the flush follow, wants to feel this uneven catch of air against his teeth in a thousand variations.

They pull apart when there’s enough of a gap for breathing and rationality to swim back between them.

“Uh,” Harry says, coherently. Louis pulls himself back onto his chair with a look of utter terror that would’ve been funny if Harry hadn’t been pretty sure he had an identical expression on his own face.

The avocado monstrosity is on the table. Louis seizes it like a drowning man seizes a life raft.

“Ah, thanks Felix,” Louis says to the air, voice lower than normal and intoxicatingly raspy. Harry just stares at him, words an impossibility. He wants to lick up the side of Louis’ neck, wants to know what would happen if he pulled Louis’ hair. It turns out he wants a damn lot of things that have absolutely nothing to do with mergers and everything to do with Louis on the weekend, this weekend, every weekend.  
  
Louis takes a bite of the toast and his entire face transforms. “What the  _fuck do you call this_ ,” he gags, and Harry starts laughing. 


	6. Who's scruffy looking?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An origin-chapter-scrap that washed up from a Star Wars AU: THERE SHOULD BE MORE STAR WARS AUs

The canteen was lit primarily by:

1) the resonant bulbs at the end of the strange saxophones that the band was playing, pulsing in time to the music

2) the scanner at the door that chirped madly when Louis walked in due to his open merchant violations, until Liam, with a  _very_ disgruntled chirp of his own, had come across the bar to wave his cred patch over the infra band and designate Louis as a Known Associate for the evening

3) the menacing red orbs that hung from the chitinous coverings on most of the Scrapers, one more orb for every conquest, and there were a lot of orbs—Dessuna was a Scraper’s world if it was anything other than the hacked-up wad of phlegm at the end of the galaxy’s cold. The Scrapers weren’t Empire so much as they were Empire Parasites, not good enough to be elite bounty hunters but numerous and determined and fire-power-licensed enough to spread the Empire’s fear through vague interplanetary warrants and careless raids through normal people’s homes in search of rare metals. Dessuna hated the Scrapers, and yet you didn’t stand against them. You merely hoped to stay out of reach, and mourned when they weren’t looking. 

The bar was not really lit at all by the ring of dim gas-glow that was supposed to light it, which was why, Louis reflected, a lightsaber glowing into sudden, menacing life was so goddamn startling.

“DOWN,” Louis hissed, unnecessarily because he was already pulling Liam under the table with one hand and with the other, grabbing a food mat and sliding it on top of Liam’s head.

Liam spluttered. “Ew, the fuck, that’s  _disgust—”_

“Shut  _up,”_ Louis hissed, clamping the food mat down more firmly over Liam’s head. It was indeed disgusting but it didn’t matter. Keeping Liam safe was the only job that Louis actually kept, fulltime. Liam was Louis’ self-determined responsibility and he had been since they were babies and Liam had revealed himself for the soft-hearted, scholastically-inclined teddy bear that he was. Louis had known immediately that  _somebody_ had to save Liam from getting  _shanked_ , and if there was one good thing that Louis ever did in the galaxy, it was trying to keep Liam out of the trouble that inevitably found Louis.

He couldn’t possibly blame himself for this though. This was  _wild._ The bar was in a panic, aliens and humans and droids diving or wheeling or sliming for the cover. Dessuna was a shithole but it was usually a quiet shithole, and real fear was shooting through the air like a novel, noxious gas.

The man in the middle of the canteen brandished his lightsaber in a smooth, circular motion. It hummed. It was an incandescent blue, a strange sky-blue, a glow from the inside out, a glow you could hardly look at but also couldn’t look away from.

“It’s real,” Louis whispered, blinking at the lightsaber. It flickered back at him. It sounded like a song.  

“Of course it’s real, he  _cut off that guy’s arm,_ ” Liam whispered frantically, peering out from under the mat. Louis shook his head back into normalcy. The guy with the missing arm was a Scraper, and a vicious, ugly one that Louis had seen around the tanks before, rationing medical supplies and getting a commission off it from the local ‘Trooper station. Nobody was going to mourn his arm.

The two of them hunched close around the pole of the table. Oracles only knew how many guns were about to go off in this bar out of fear alone, they had to get out. Louis made a quick calculation toward the backdoor. The man was turned away from them, and everyone else was trying to bust out the front.

The man frowned and waved his hand, almost absently. There was suddenly something wrong with the front door. The heavy security shield flickered into angry existence. Three droids tried to plug in to the security jimmy in the wall at the same time, and they sparked angrily at each other.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” said the man.

“As  _if,”_ Louis hissed, because maybe the Scraper was a psycho but  _there was still a goddamn arm on the floor._

“He was drawing a laser gun, in an instant it would’ve taken out–” the man said to no one, or to the whole bar, and stopped himself. It was almost like an apology.

The man in the middle of the canteen was so classic middle-of-the-Galaxy that Louis didn’t know  _how_ they missed him earlier in the evening. Healthy build and healthy face and generally  _healthy,_ which was obviously middle-of-the-Galaxy. But there had previously been something distractingly vague about him, like a haze in the air that made you think very suddenly about other things. 

Now he was unmissable, tall and purposeful in brown robes that trailed out from a folded white tunic. That getup could have been a lot of things—khyber monk wannabee, knockoff tourist gear from Coruscant, could even be a Scraper dressed up and pretending to be Jedi just to fuck with everybody. Here on Dessuna, how would anybody  _know._

Louis knew, somehow. He wasn’t a Scraper. He hoped to god he wasn’t a bounty hunter. But it  _couldn’t_ be a Jedi.

“I’m looking for someone,” the man said gravely, “I hope you’ll forgive the inconvenience. I’m looking for someone and it’ll be a great deal easier if you all just cooperate.”

“Oh my god,” Liam was whispering. “Oh my god, there’s a fugitive on Dessuna, what the fuck,” 

“This is some mistake,” Louis whispered back, with confidence. “It’s just insane, like anyone would come  _all the way out here,_ for what,” 

“They could be hiding,” Liam argued. 

“ _We’d have noticed,”_ Louis hissed back. And it was true. There were only a couple hundred of them on the farms and every new face outside of the farms would’ve been an immediate surprise. Dessuna just wasn’t the kind of place that could hide anyone, wasn’t the kind of place where anything ever changed.

The bartender had started yawling something about the old ways, and the Council, and how he never meant to do that deal with the ‘Troopers it just had to happen, didn’t it, and anyway where had the Jedi been in all of this? The man just ignored him. He scanned the crowd still waving that saber.  

“I know he’s here,” the man said, frowning, and tilting his head, like he was listening for a radio. 

“On my count,” Louis said, tightening his grip on Liam’s arm. “If we’re quick it won’t be worth it to even notice us, out to the storage room, through the top window, just like booking it from Eduardo back when we were underage drinking,”

“Lou, no, this is nothing like lamming from the farms,” Liam whispered frantically, “This is real shit, this guy is—I don’t even know. We should probably just cooperate—”

“Don’t be goddamn  _farmer,”_ Louis whispered, equally frantic. 

“That’s not fair,” Liam shot, involuntary and hurt, and it wasn’t, and Louis would regret it later, but there was no time or space for philosophics. Louis pulled in a deep breath, ready to spring. The man’s back was toward them, and he was focused on scanning through the crowd. 

Louis, dint of being a very bad influence and paranoid to boot, had a distractor flash bomb planted under the counter of every single bar in the farmlands waystation. He found the tiny tabular trigger in the hidden pocket of his loose junkyard pants.

“One, two, NOW—”  

He hit the trigger, they shot out from under the table, and chaos erupted behind them.

***

Louis had known early that he was destined for trouble. He had, after all, sprung into existence illegally, the orphan son of a Scraper ship slave who was made default free after he had not so much run away as gotten  _lost_ at the age of four or five, found on the moisture farms and rolled up into Liam’s kind, hardworking, didn’t-really-deserve-it family as long as he kept under the radar from absolutely everybody, the Scrapers and the ‘Troopers and  _everything_ interesting.

“I  _try,_ though,” Louis insisted as he boosted Liam toward the top window of the storage pantry. “I really try to not be around trouble when trouble comes in. Why did trouble have to come to  _our_ bar?” 

“I know,” Liam said, because Liam was lovely. “I know you try. Nothing’s fair. But is that why you already had chipped out toeholds in this wall, because you were so certain that you were avoiding trouble,” Liam puffed for breath. There were warring noises from the bar but no one had followed them out the door and down the dark tunnel.

“That’s neither here nor there, I’m just  _creative,”_ Louis said, grunting. “Why. Are. You. So. Heavy.”

Liam grasped the metal rung of the window and leveraged himself into the kind of pullup, ab-muscle-assisted heroic that only Liam was capable of.

“So I can do this,” Liam said, turning around in the window frame and grabbing for Louis’ wrists, lifting him into the air.

“Bar night in my bedroom tonight, instead,” Liam said breathlessly. 

“Ah, freedom,” Louis said happily. Dessuna’s rancid air hit his face, and a hand clasped around his ankle.

“So sorry,” said a deep voice behind him. 

Once a metal-drop scanner had caught Louis raiding a fallen ship for spare parts—he had been frozen in midair, like every cell was caught in an electric prison. It was suddenly like that now. The man stood behind him, saber hilt loose in free hand, fingers wrapped around Louis’ ankle, hardly moving at all and yet,  _somehow,_ Louis was trapped. 

“ _Louis,”_ Liam wailed, yanking with all of his strength, and that was a lot of strength. But then he watched in horror as his fingers uncurled themselves from Louis’ wrist. Louis fell back down the wall. He didn’t hit the ground, but lowered gently. It was strange and impossible. 

“Louis, I’ve been looking for you.” the man breathed. His expression was searching and determined and reminiscent of the ancient, meaningless sculptures that Louis had occasionally seen and usually ignored outside the farm. Robed figures turning to dust.

“The hell you are, why would you even say that,” Louis managed, confused. He couldn’t move. The man held him against the wall with one hand like it was nothing. 

“You need to come with me,” the man said. Up close his expression was—it flickered, like it was him but not him, like not all of him was the Jedi mask. He had earnest, wide green eyes and an accent that sounded like something Louis had used to recognize, but none of it made any sense, none of it at all.

“Louis!” Liam reached down from the window helplessly. The mask came down on the man’s face, and he flicked a finger up toward Liam without even looking. Liam shot back, fell away, and Louis heard him crash into the dumpster below.

And then Louis felt  _rage._ The mysteriously constraining power was still wrapping around him, tight like an anti-crash harness. Louis gritted his teeth, reached deep inside of his chest, and  _pushed._

The manstaggered backwards. His entire face was a sudden melting astonishment as he wobbled away, and Louis took a fierce joy in it. Louis leapt forward, scrambling for the saber hilt. But he was abruptly exhausted, drained like a battery, and his flails were no match for the fluid, combat-trained reflexes of the stranger. He found himself on the sandy floor of the pantry with the iridescent, shattering hum of the lightsaber inches from his eye.

Louis blinked at it. The saber sang to him.

“ _That’s_ why,” the man said.


End file.
